


Clockwork, Almost

by parcequelle



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Community: femslash07, F/F, Originally Posted on LiveJournal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-13
Updated: 2007-03-13
Packaged: 2017-10-24 14:33:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/264579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parcequelle/pseuds/parcequelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She doesn't believe in beauty until Kathryn Janeway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clockwork, Almost

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [celeria](celeria.livejournal.com/profile) for [femslash07](femslash07.livejournal.com/profile), originally under the name brilliant_lies.

She doesn’t believe in beauty until Kathryn Janeway.

Before Kathryn Janeway, the only constant in B'Elanna's life is engineering; inanimate objects that can't judge her behaviour, bulkheads that don’t glare at her forehead sidelong, scrap metal that won't disapprove of one or both halves of her heritage. B'Elanna can rely on engineering—she knows that systems are always going to fail and machines are always going to break and let people down, and those people are always going to need someone who knows enough about why that happens to fit the pieces of their lives back together.

When she joins the Maquis she inherits a cause, inherits a leader and a purpose that has been lacking most of her adult life. The Maquis takes her half-caste volatility right along with her raw skill and gives her the benefit of the doubt, gives her a chance and a long-overdue dose of confidence in herself and her abilities. The Maquis brings direction, and in a streak of irony she soon comes to expect from her life as a Federation fugitive, it brings with it an illogical kind of stability.

But then comes the Caretaker, then comes the Delta Quadrant and _Voyager_ and Captain Kathryn Janeway, the very embodiment of rigid Starfleet principles and protocol, then comes one straight year of pep-talks from Chakotay, sermons that preach the importance of tolerance and patience and—B’Elanna’s personal favourite—co-operation with the members of her department.

Then comes B’Elanna’s gradual, cautious awareness that Kathryn Janeway is different, that she is more accepting and more forgiving and she won’t hold B’Elanna’s colourful history against her. She realises that Janeway is generous and decent in spite of her devotion to Starfleet, and that she is willing to see B’Elanna for the talented engineer she is, and not as an insubordinate renegade incapable of successful integration into her crew.

And then comes the night five years later when things inch forward, when a mutual case of insomnia guides them both into the mess hall at 0300, when they collide by accident and consequently communicate, properly, as friends, for the first time. And then, the quiet moments of B’Elanna’s realisation that her grudging respect for Kathryn Janeway has slipped across the invisible boundary of friendship into something far more difficult to define.

***

Four hours pass before Janeway moves. Four hours, long and boring hours during which she implements every method of sleep inducement she can remember, from the traditional counting of mammals to Klingon incense and Vulcan meditation. She hasn’t slept a great deal since _Voyager_ entered this void, so she is used to these eternal hours spent tossing and turning and staring at the bulkheads. It is only when she finds herself trying to summon a visit from Q that she realises her attempts at distraction are fruitless.

She dresses slowly, contemplating a late-night visit to the holodeck for a few peaceful seconds before she recalls: _Voyager_ is still in the void. Crew morale is at a low second only to their first months in the Delta Quadrant, and her officers are suffering the same stir-crazy agitation afflicting Janeway herself. The memory settles, an unpleasant tang grazing the edge of her thoughts, and Kathryn, lost in thought, wanders her way through the corridors and onto deck six.

It’s late, and the lights in the mess hall are powered down; it’s silent but for the gentle thrum of the air cooling and food-preservation systems, and deserted—

“Neelix, is that you?”

—but for B’Elanna Torres.

Kathryn pauses halfway through the room, and says, “Not the last time I looked, Lieutenant.”

“Captain!” B’Elanna exclaims. “I’m sorry, I—didn’t realise it was you.”

“Relax, B’Elanna,” she says, quirking a smile, affecting a casual air she doesn’t feel. “Mind if I join you?”

“Please.” B’Elanna gestures to the adjacent chair. “Have a seat.”

Kathryn does, but not before she replicates a cup of coffee so she has something to do with her hands. She’s never quite known how to relax around B’Elanna, not once talk of engineering has been exhausted. She isn’t usually one whose casual words catch on her tongue, and she’s an experienced enough captain to know how to talk to her crew, but B’Elanna Torres is something else. B’Elanna presents something of a challenge.

They clash, B’Elanna and Kathryn, they’re too different or too much alike; they argue and they disagree and they only find common ground where the chain of command will interfere.

After inordinate silence, B’Elanna finally says, “I’ve been thinking, Captain. Do you think you made the right decision? Freeing Seven of Nine?”

And Janeway inhales deeply and sits tall and tells her. Then later on, Kathryn says, “I was never going to let the Mari brainwash you, B’Elanna. I would have taken those guards down with phasers if I’d had to. I won’t sacrifice members of my crew for the stubbornness of one alien culture.”

*

The words wash over B’Elanna, and as she watches Kathryn drink her second 3am cup of coffee, she thinks: _I needed this_. The tension starts when, bold and impulsive, she mentions interpersonal relations-protocol for seventy-year deep space missions to foreign quadrants, and she finds herself sprouting information at an alarming rate, taking advantage of the unexpected intimacy between them and talking it out, all her worries about Tom and how they don't see each other and how she’s suspected for some time that this whole thing’s more trouble than it’s worth and sometimes, sometimes she thinks she’d be better off alone.

She says it with an eerily quiet acceptance, her eyes grave, her face subdued, and she won’t meet Kathryn’s gaze.

“B’Elanna.” Kathryn extends an elegant hand and rests her fingers at the hollow of B’Elanna’s neck and shoulder, squeezing gently, encouraging her to continue. B’Elanna feels the pressure of her fingers through her uniform like a burning mark on her skin, and she bites the inside of her lip to keep from saying something she knows she’ll regret in the morning.

She lifts her eyes right as Kathryn lifts hers, and their gazes meet and lock across the rapidly shrinking space dividing their faces, and the tension flies up.

"B’Elanna,” Kathryn repeats, and it’s almost like she’s forcing herself to press on, “you have to take care of yourself. You can't - it's unhealthy to cut yourself off from the crew. You need to fight the urge to isolate yourself."

"The way you did, Captain?" B’Elanna retorts, glaring the words at her, and it is intense enough to pull Kathryn in.

She narrows her eyes. "Lieutenant."

"Captain?"

And this is a game, now, a childish contest of stubbornness and will be made all the more childish by the intensity they are affording it. "Lieutenant."

"Yes, Captain?"

The void has everyone on edge, glancing sideways at each other, jumping at the smallest of sounds, and B’Elanna soon discovers that Captain Janeway is no exception. B’Elanna watches her struggle, and she sees—all of them see—that Kathryn Janeway’s heart wages war with the Prime Directive every day, with only her head and her sense of guilt to play for defence.

The weariness is evident in the lines in her forehead, in the shadows around her eyes, but B’Elanna isn’t one to relinquish her stance. The staring continues, long moments that draw out until Kathryn finally cracks a smile, just a corner of her mouth tilting upwards. "Touché," she says dryly. Then she adds, "I'm sorry, B’Elanna. It wasn't my intention to judge you."

Her eyes seek forgiveness, all gentle and bright and determined all at once, and B’Elanna thinks about Kathryn Janeway’s grace, of how she's elegant even in repentance. How gentleness and intensity combine to paint vivid strokes across her cheekbones, how the colours catch on to her hair and she seems to light up the space around her. How she is everything B’Elanna cannot reach.

"Don't mention it," she says, and now she's thinking of Tom.

(She's thinking of Tom, all the time, a grey-tinted twist of pervasive insistence, just beneath the surface of her mind. She's thinking of Tom and his children’s cartoons and his holodeck programs— _Captain Proton: Defender of the Universe_ and all ridiculous scenarios therein—and she’s thinking emptiness and question marks and how Tom might be the reason she can’t sleep, but Kathryn Janeway, this woman beside her, is the reason she can’t _breathe_.)

*

And there will be the future, the time years later when B’Elanna will laugh, not quite as bitterly as she should, and she'll say, "I should have thanked you." She'll shake her head and she’ll say, "If I'd known, I would have been thanking you."

And Janeway will listen politely, the picture of poise and self-control, and she’ll act as though she doesn’t understand.

*

Tom hasn't stopped talking for a second since they returned. He's done nothing but talk, talk until his blood has rushed to his face and his throat is dry and there's nothing left inside him to say. He talks and talks and talks and he tells her nothing, and when she closes her eyes and waits for the shock and she realises she's expected this, right from the start, she's expected it, she understands the weight of her mistakes.

And in a tiny, darkened corner of her mind, a quiet voice is telling her how to fix it.

***

The first time B’Elanna comes to visit, Janeway ignores her. She hears the buzz of her front door comm panel and freezes, locks her limbs in place in bed, lies perfectly still. She ceases all noise along with all movement and holds her breath, she pretends she isn't home, and she is so concerned with the deception that she doesn't see that B’Elanna sees her draw her curtains tighter once she believes herself alone once again.

*

B'Elanna's matrimonial contacts have proven useful more than once; it takes a little half-Klingon persuasion and a little galactically-renowned Janeway-inspired diplomacy, but Admiral Paris finally murmurs confirmation of the rumours: Janeway has shown a gradual mental decline since her promotion, she's having trouble handling even the lightest, simplest of workloads, and Starfleet has recently granted her request that she conduct all her independent work from home.

"And where is that?" B’Elanna blurts, eyeing the admiral squarely across his desk. "Please, Admiral. Owen. I need to speak to her. Will you trust me on this?"

He gazes at her long and piercing, and then he says, "For the mother of my granddaughter, always."

The admiral tells her that Janeway wanted a place where she could take some time to herself, but still keep a watchful eye on her mother. It's a modest slice of property in the countryside, he tells her; secluded and picturesque, furnished in the same traditional style as her family home. He leans on 'secluded,' his eyes greying with the poorly disguised concern, and B’Elanna finds herself nodding to him, finds herself whispering, "I'll do what I can," though she isn’t sure what she, of all people, could bring to a Kathryn Janeway entrenched in one of her infamous phases of depression.

B’Elanna rejects the negativity, straightens her spine, tightens her jaw and says, "Thank you, Admiral."

He reaches out and clasps a warm hand onto her shoulder, smiling to match it. "Bring her back, B’Elanna."

"Yes, sir. I'll do what I can."

After three weeks, she has to try again. She throws together a bag of Miral's things - along with a few of her own, tucked into the side pockets - and she sets off for Bloomington, Indiana, to see her captain.

(When she tells Tom she's going away for a few days, maybe a week or two, she isn't sure yet, Tom is so busy trying to fill the silences he doesn't hear her speak.)

*

The second time B’Elanna goes to visit, she is startled by how far Bloomington is from Starfleet, from the sleek, towering architecture of San Francisco and the bustling organisation to which they returned. She knows she should have expected it, especially having been here before, but this time it’s different, this time she has the memory of Owen Paris’ darkened eyes playing behind her own, and she’s watching for things like the distance.

When Kathryn Janeway finally opens her front door, her brow creased and her eyes narrowed into wariness, B’Elanna’s entire justification for persisting with her visit flies straight out of her mind and away on the balmy breeze.

She opens her mouth to say, _Let me explain_ or _I know you probably don’t want to see me_ , but what she ends up saying is: “It’s my wedding anniversary. It’s my wedding anniversary and Tom’s working late.” She clutches Miral closer to her chest, unprepared for the rush of loneliness the words inspire.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Kathryn says, and she steps aside to let them in.

***

Before they know it, she's calling Indiana home.


End file.
